2013: The Year You Wave At Tech And Quit Fiddling With It

Let's be clear: Microsoft's 3-D motion-sensing, depth-sensing, gesture-aware camera system Kinect is a breakthrough in gaming control. But the actual clever stuff inside Kinect is made by a company called PrimeSense, and this company has just said it's got a wholly new sensor that's better, and yet small enough to fit inside a smartphone.

This means it has the potential to be a breakthrough in controlling anything. The new system is called Capri, and though it's due for an official unveiling at the CES event in January, PrimeSense has revealed that it's about ten times smaller than the current generation of 3-D sensors, and the company suggests it's "certainly the smallest 3D sensor in the world." Along with the size reduction, Capri brings better algorithms and a lower cost. That means PrimeSense imagines it will be the sort of addition that would go into PCs, tablets, laptops, mobile phones, TVs, consumer robotics, and so on. The implications of this are potentially huge, because we know developers are only just coming to grips with how clever they can be using Kinect as a PC peripheral.